A gecko was found right on top of the crispy section of this breaker.


After the power failed, it came back on about 5 seconds later. Then we began experiencing kind of a rolling brown/blackout but every second or two. I flipped off every breaker in the box (none were tripped) and called our apartments emergency maintenance number, the guy was a half hour away and arrived in a half hour. We checked inside the main breaker box on the building and a very crispy little Gecko was perched atop our apartments' main breaker. It had to broken off of the bar as it was welded to it. Two other apartments had cooked geckos, perched on top of their mains. They replaced those at the same time. Those did not have damage to the breaker like ours did. The got the bars early Tuesday and replaced it all Tuesday morning.

So, evidently geckos are attracted to electricity. I always liked to see them as they eat wasps among other things. Maybe not so much now. I got the guy to throw some mothballs into the electrical box to try and ward them off.

Any idea of how to keep the geckos but repel them from the electricals?

Buy their insurance and invite them in for tea.

Actually not very uncommon. I've seen mice, squirrels, spiders, and birds do the same.

The only prevention is to make sure there are no open knock outs on your panel or meter enclosure.

It’s the warmth of the breaker that attracts them

We used to call those " 30 amp Lizards " .

quote:

Originally posted by selogic:
We used to call those " 30 amp Lizards " .

Single use?

First thing I thought when I saw this thread. Geco spelled different, but still Geco.

No more Geico commercials after that happened.

We lost power like that a few years ago.

A buzzard landed on top of the transformer once.

14,000v was not his friend.

Correlation is not causation.
Just a random act took that poor guy's life.

He was the path of least resistance.